The first edition of In the Shadow of the Ancestors (2007) was the first and only summary of decades of archaeological research in the Oman Peninsula. This second expanded had a long and winding journey toward publication. The passing away of Serge Cleuziou not long after the release of the first edition left Maurizio Tosi alone in completing this challenging enterprise. For this reason, and out of respect for his lifelong friend and colleague, he decided not to intervene too extensively on the main contents, but to add instead to the original eleven chapters a number of new ‘windows’ written by other scholars, in order to include more recent research and interpretations. In addition to the main contents, the new contributions by this younger generation of scholars, most of whom were students and collaborators of Cleuziou and Tosi, offers great testament to the legacy the authors leave behind them.

Since 2007, the conferences organized under the title 'Broadening Horizons' have provided a regular venue for postgraduates and early career scholars in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Three volumes present the proceedings of the 6th Broadening Horizons Conference, which took place at the Freie Universitat Berlin from 24-28 June, 2019. The general theme, 'Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue', is aimed at encouraging communication and the development of multidisciplinary approaches to the study of material cultures and textual sources. Volume 1 contains 17 papers from Session 1: Entanglement. Material Culture and Written Sources in Dialogue; Session 2: Integrating Sciences in Historical and Archaeological Research; and Session 5: Which Continuity? Evaluating Stability, Transformation, and Change in Transitional Periods.

The emergence of ancient urbanism has long held the interest of archaeologists attempting to understand the origins of inequality and its links to early urban life. This volume presents the results of archeological research at the Early Bronze Age sites of Numayra and Ras an-Numayra, conducted to investigate the rise of Early Bronze Age urban society, with a distinctive focus on links between environmental and social systems. The Dead Sea Plain excavations at Numayra and Ras an-Numayra uncovered extraordinarily well-preserved architecture, artifacts, and faunal and paleoethnobotanical remains that offer exciting and profound insights that enhance our understanding of life in these walled settlements. Under the codirection of R. Thomas Schaub and Walter E. Rast, the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain team designed their research with an explicitly anthropological focus, based on the New Archaeology’s principles for archaeological knowledge production. Their excavations at these sites in the mid-1970s and early 1980s heralded the now-common approach combining archaeology, paleoethnobotany, palynology, bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, geology, and ethnoarchaeology into the research project, with a multidisciplinary team in the field to systematize collection and sampling procedures. These excavations at Numayra and Ras an-Numayra represent a watershed moment in the history of archaeological research in the southern Levant, setting new standards for scientific methods and a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the past.

Though immediately recognizable in public discourse as a modern state in a political "hot zone," Armenia has a material history and visual culture that reaches back to the Paleolithic era. This book presents a timely and much-needed survey of the arts of Armenia from antiquity to the early eighteenth century C.E. Divided chronologically, it brings into discussion a wide range of media, including architecture, stone sculpture, works in metal, wood, and cloth, manuscript illumination, and ceramic arts. Critically, The Art of Armenia presents this material within historical and archaeological contexts, incorporating the results of specialist literature in various languages. It also positions Armenian art within a range of broader comparative contexts including, but not limited to, the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, Byzantium, the Islamic world, Yuan-dynasty China, and seventeenth-century Europe. The Art of Armenia offers students, scholars, and heritage readers of the Armenian community something long desired but never before available: a complete and authoritative introduction to three thousand years of Armenian art, archaeology, architecture, and design.

This volume presents a series of studies by scholars working in Middle Eastern archaeology who actively apply social theory to interpret their fieldwork. It aims to highlight the value of using social theory in the interpretation of field work in a region where, traditionally, such approaches have not played a major role.There are a number of factors that account for why social theory is often under-exploited by archaeologists in this part of the world. In many countries, where large numbers of the foreign archaeologists are involved, a division between those doing fieldwork and those undertaking archaeological interpretation can easily arise. Or, the lack of interest in social theory may stem from a legacy of positivism that overrides other approaches. There is also the fact that archaeology and anthropology often belong to separate academic departments and are considered two separate disciplines disconnected from each other. In some cases the centrality of historical paradigms has precluded the use of social theory.There are also divisions between universities and other research institutions, such as departments of antiquities, which is not conductive to interdisciplinary cooperation. This factor is especially debilitating in contexts of rapid destruction of sites and the exponential growth of salvage excavations and emergency surveys.The papers integrate a wide range of perspectives including 'New' or 'Processual' archaeology, Marxist, 'Post-Processual', evolutionist, cognitive, symbolic, and Cyber- archaeologies and touch on many topics including 3D representation, GIS, mapping and social theory, semiotics and linguistics, gender and bioarchaeology, social and technical identities, and modern historical modellingy and social practices in Middle Eastern archaeology.

In Pursuit of Visibility honors the distinguished career of a scholar of Canaan and ancient Israel, Beth Alpert Nakhai. In fifteen diverse essays, Professor Nakhai's students and colleagues celebrate her important contributions to the field of Near Eastern Archaeology, including her research into gender, household, and cult in the Bronze and Iron Age southern Levant, and her tireless efforts to acknowledge and support women in the profession. These essays reflect Professor Nakhai's commitment to combining archaeology and text to reconstruct aspects of ancient life and make those who are marginalized visible in both the past and the present.

The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon is an exciting story of detection involving legends, expert decipherment of ancient texts, and a vivid description of a little-known civilization. Recognized in ancient times as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the legendary Hanging Garden of Babylon and its location have long been steeped in mystery and puzzling myths. In this remarkable volume Stephanie Dalley, a world expert on ancient Babylonian language, exposes new evidence and clarifies all the known material about this enigmatic World Wonder. Placing the Garden within a tradition of royal patronage, Dalley describes how the decipherment of an original text and its link to sculpture in the British Museum has enabled her to pin down where and by which king the Garden was laid out, and to describe in detail what it looked like. Through this dramatic and fascinating reconstruction of the Garden, Dalley also follows its influence on later garden design. Unscrambling layer by layer the many stories that have built up around the Garden, including the parts played by Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar, Dalley shows why this Garden deserves its place alongside the Pyramids and the Colossus of Rhodes as one of the most astonishing technical achievements of the ancient world.

In the desert sands of southern Jordan lies a once-hidden conflict landscape along the Hejaz Railway. Built at the beginning of the twentieth-century, this narrow-gauge 1,320 km track stretched from Damascus to Medina and served to facilitate participation in the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. The discovery and archaeological investigation of an unknown landscape of insurgency and counter-insurgency along this route tells a different story of the origins of modern guerrilla warfare, the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Bedouin warriors, and the dramatic events of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18. Ten years of research in this prehistoric terrain has revealed sites lost for almost 100 years: vast campsites occupied by railway builders; Ottoman Turkish machine-gun redoubts; Rolls Royce Armoured Car raiding camps; an ephemeral Royal Air Force desert aerodrome; as well as the actual site of the Hallat Ammar railway ambush. This unique and richly illustrated account from Nicholas Saunders tells, in intimate detail, the story of a seminal episode of the First World War and the reshaping of the Middle East that followed.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's open access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem capture worldwide attention in various media outlets. The continuing quest to discover the city's physical remains is not simply an attempt to define Israel's past or determine its historical legacy. In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is also an attempt to legitimate-or undercut-national claims to sovereignty. Bridging the ever-widening gap between popular coverage and specialized literature, Finding Jerusalem provides a comprehensive tour of the politics of archaeology in the city. Through a wide-ranging discussion of the material evidence, Katharina Galor illuminates the complex legal contexts and ethical precepts that underlie archaeological activity and the discourse of "cultural heritage" in Jerusalem. This book addresses the pressing need to disentangle historical documentation from the religious aspirations, social ambitions, and political commitments that shape its interpretation.

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

Numerous metallic artefacts, which anciently were deposited in a hoard, came to light per chance on the campus of the Sultan Qaboos University in Al Khawd, Sultanate of Oman. Mostly fashioned from copper, these arrowheads, axes/adzes, bangles, daggers, knives, socketed lance/ spearheads, metal vessels, razors, rings, swords, and tweezers compare well with numerous documented artefact classes from south-eastern Arabia assigned to the Early Iron Age (1200-300 BCE). Discussion of the international trade between ancient Makan, Dilmun, and Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BCE dominates the archaeological literature about Arabia archaeology. The Al Khawd hoard and its contemporaries lend weight to the suggestion that 1st millennium BCE Qade (the name of south-eastern Arabia at that time) was even more important than Bronze Age Makan in terms of the copper trade volume. A reassessment shows the Early Iron Age by no means to be a dark age, but rather an innovative, successful adaptive period characterised by evident population growth.

Plant Food Processing Tools at Early Neolithic Goebekli Tepe reconstructs plant food processing at this key Pre-Pottery Neolithic (9600-8000 BC) site, with an emphasis on cereals, legumes and herbs as food sources, on grinding and pounding tools for their processing, and on the vessels implied in the consumption of meals and beverages. Functional investigations on grinding and pounding tools and on stone containers through use-wear and residue analyses are at the core of the book. Their corpus amounts to more than 7000 objects, constituting thus the largest collection published so far from the Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia. The spectrum of tools and of processed plants is very broad, but porridges made of cereals, legumes and herbs, and beers predominate over bread-like food. The find contexts show that cooking took place around the well-known monumental buildings, while the large quantity of tools suggests feasting in addition to daily meals.

European adventurers began exploring Palmyra's priceless Roman ruins in the 17th century, but it wasn't until the advent of photography that the public became aware of its scale and majesty. In 1885, the sight of Palmyra astounded members of the Wolfe Expedition as they journeyed home from Mesopotamia. The group's photographer, John Henry Haynes, documented the monumental temples, tombs and colonnades in more than a hundred invaluable images. Since then, Haynes and his work have largely been forgotten, and the forces of the self-styled Islamic State have destroyed the key monuments of this world-renowned site, including the glorious Temple of Bel. Haynes's images of Palmyra - published here for the first time - are all the more poignant. The Syrian city of Palmyra - known as ‘the Pearl of the Desert’ - was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. A key stop on the Silk Road, it was a vital link between the East and the West, and a prize fought over by successive conquering armies.

The walled town of Baraqish in interior Yemen - ancient Yathill of the Sabaeans and Minaeans - was for Alessandro de Maigret (1943-2011) 'one of the archaeological marvels not just of Yemen, but of the entire Near East'. Established as an oasis settlement in the semi-desert depression of the Jawf, it became in the 1st millennium BCE a thriving caravan station on the 'incense' route and a famed place of worship, controlled by rich rulers and merchants. Topography and trade made it a crucible of South Arabian and foreign traditions, and on several occasions, it was a border town disputed between rival powers. A sustained archaeological effort to investigate the site and area began in 1986 by the Italian Archaeological Mission, led by de Maigret, and developed in two phases. In 1989-1992 the temple of the patron god was excavated, while between 2003-2007 a range of new excavations were undertaken, including a second temple, a sounding, a dissection of the tell's edge outside the Minaean wall, and a cemetery. Presented across two volumes, Volume 1: Excavations of Temple B and related research and restoration is particularly devoted to the temple of god 'Athtar dhu-Qabd (Temple B), dated to the second half of the 1st millennium BCE. Six chapters fully illustrate its excavation, architecture, restoration, findings, inscriptions, and dating. The contribution of this work and monument to regional history transcends its local significance. The report is framed by ten chapters detailing the historiography of research on Baraqish, the initial surveys carried out in 1986-1987, the architecture and restoration of Temple A together with the extramural excavation at the adjacent curtain wall, the cultic equipment, and radiocarbon datings. The nine contributors are leading scholars in the above fields and include recognized experts in South Arabian archaeology. The core of Volume 2: Extramural excavations in Area C and overview studies is a final report on Area C, an exploratory dissection through the western edge of the Baraqish mound outside the curtain wall, and a unique operation for Yemen until now. Eight chapters detail the excavation, stratigraphy, and geoarchaeology (from about 800 BCE to the present), in addition to radiocarbon chronology, cultural finds, animal and plant remains, economy, major historical events, and unique evidence for trade. Four further chapters offer a glimpse of settlement archaeology for Sabaean Yathill and the survey of a religious centre to the west, together with a first typology of Minaean pottery and an epigraphic and political-historical overview for Baraqish and the Jawf. The contributors are recognized experts in South Arabian archaeology.

This book presents a detailed overview of the firearms used in Oman over the last four centuries. Portable firearms were brought into the Arabian Gulf by the Portuguese, but there is no trace of these early weapons the region. In Oman, the typical matchlock guns with decorated Indian barrels were highly esteemed and they were passed from generation to generation as a family heritage. Matchlock guns were replaced only by breech-loading Martini Henry rifles at the end of the 19th century, when Muscat became the major firearms' entrepot in the Arabian Gulf with hundreds of thousands of breech loading rifles re-exported throughout the whole region up to Afghanistan and Persia. The Martini Henry rifle and its variants were by far the most common weapon and Belgian made Martini Henry were specifically engraved for the Muscat market. Cannon entered the country in great number mostly as ordnances on Royal Navy ships and they are now kept in forts, towers and fortified buildings across the entire Oman. The weapons described in this book are mostly from the National Museum and Bait al Zubair Museum in Muscat.

The archaeological excavations along the route of packages 3 and 4 of the Batinah Expressway, Sultanate of Oman, conducted during the spring and summer of 2014, recorded over 60 archaeological sites over the 200km stretch of roadway cutting through the Batinah plain, north-west of Muscat. The majority of these sites were prehistoric tombs of varying ages. These excavations have allowed a re-thinking of the dating of some of these tombs, looking particularly at the structural styles of the tombs as well as their location in the landscape. It has also demonstrated techniques of rapid yet reliable excavation and recording techniques adapted from UK commercial archaeology for the Omani conditions. The report builds on the work of academic studies and adds a large dataset to the archaeology of the Batinah, Oman and the wider region. It is hoped that this will allow a wider scale reconsideration of the burial styles of the prehistoric Gulf.

This book explores pottery making and communities during the Bakun period (c. 5000 - 4000 BCE) in the Kur River Basin, Fars province, southwestern Iran, through the analysis of ceramic materials collected at Tall-e Jari A, Tall-e Gap, and Tall-e Bakun A & B. Firstly, it reconsiders the stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates of the four sites by reviewing the descriptions of excavation trenches, then presents a new chronological relationship between the sites. The book sets out diachronic changes in the the Bakun pottery quantitatively, namely the increase of black-on-buff ware and the gradual shift of vessel forms. It also presents analyses of pottery-making techniques, painting skills, petrography, and geochemistry and clarifies minor changes in the chai nes ope ratoires and major changes in painting skill. Finally, the book discusses the organisation of pottery production from a relational perspective. It concludes that the more fixed community of pottery making imposed longer apprenticeship periods and that social inequality also increased.

The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh is the second volume of the final reports on the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh, northwest Syria. The 12-year field campaigns at Tell el-Kerkh yielded several unexpected archaeological findings. The existence of the oldest cultural deposits from the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (c. 8700-8300 BC) in northwestern Syria was revealed. The investigations also revealed that several large and complex societies had existed from the late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to the middle Pottery Neolithic periods (c. 7600-6000 BC). One of the most conspicuous findings of the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh was the discovery of a Pottery Neolithic cemetery dating between c. 6400 and 6100 BC, which makes it one of the oldest outdoor communal cemeteries in West Asia. This book focuses specifically on this cemetery. It reports the discovery of over 240 burials and discusses the process of the formation and development of the cemetery. Initially used for traditional house burials in a corner of the settlement, the cemetery eventually became a graveyard that was physically separated from the residential buildings and consisted only of graves. In other words, burials that were deeply related to each house developed into an outdoor communal cemetery of the settlement. The Kerkh Neolithic cemetery was a precursor to the wider development of communal cemeteries in West Asia, and its investigation provides us with a deeper understanding of Neolithic society in West Asia.

First published in the 1750s, The Ruins of Palmyra and The Ruins of Baalbek are a remarkable record of an expedition to the Levant by three antiquarians - Robert Wood, John Bouverie and James Dawkins - along with a draftsman, Giovanni Battista Borra. With over 100 engravings of the classical architecture of the two ancient cities of Palmyra and Baalbek, the volumes represent the earliest-known examples of monographs on archaeological sites. They were unique in providing systematic discussion of the sites' physical and human geography alongside two kinds of pictorial evidence: views of the ancient sites in their then-present state and detailed plans, with measurements, of architectural features. This new approach was immediately copied by antiquarians in the later 18th century and also had great influence upon Neoclassical architecture in Britain, Europe and North America. This new edition features reproductions of all the engravings from the original publications and includes a new introduction by noted scholar, Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University, USA).

This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1200 - 330 BCE). Three main aspects of this industry are investigated. First, the technology behind the manufacture of stone vessels, the tools and techniques, and how these changed across time. Second, the mechanisms of exchange of stone vessels and how these were affected by the changing political landscape through time. Third, the consumption patterns of stone vessels in both elite and non-elite contexts, and how these patterns changed through time. The aim is to evaluate how the formation of new regional states, occurred in the Iron Age I-II, and their subsequent inclusion within large-scale empires, in the Iron Age III and Persian period, transformed the Near Eastern societies by exploring how the stone vessel industry was affected by these transformations. For the period and area under analysis, such a comprehensive study of stone vessels, covering a wide area and connecting this industry to the broader socioeconomic and political landscapes, has never been attempted before.

This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200-850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

Glass-Making in the Ancient Near East explores glass composition and production from the mid-second to mid-first millennia BC, essentially the first thousand years of glass-making. Multi-element analyses of 132 glasses from Pella in Jordan, and Nuzi and Nimrud in Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia), produce new and important data that provide insights into the earliest glass production. A novel method for data interpretation and presentation has been developed and used to characterise the glass types and to investigate questions of composition, raw materials, regional differences and similarities, and changes through time from the earliest consistent glass manufacture as represented at 16th century BC Pella, which is compared with Late Bronze Age Nuzi, to the Iron Age at both Pella and Nimrud. These compositional data are compared with available glass compositional data from the widespread regions of the Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran and France, uncovering fascinating connections that, when placed in the archaeological context, reveal much about glass production, raw material sources, and distribution of finished and raw glasses. Technological innovations, including the introduction of natron-fluxed glasses, early decolouring with antimony, and the use of Egyptian cobalt colourant in Near Eastern glasses, are explored as part of this unique investigation of the critical developments in sophisticated and complex glass-making that laid the foundations for the establishment of large-scale production in the ensuing Hellenistic and Roman periods.

In this important and timely publication, top international scholars present current research and developments about the art, archaeology, and history of the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Syria. Palmyra became tragic headline news in 2015, when it was overtaken by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which destroyed many of its monuments and artifacts. The essays in this book include new scholarship on Palmyra's origins and evolution as well as developments from both before and after its damage by ISIS, providing new information that will be relevant to current and future generations of art historians and archaeologists. The book also includes a moving tribute by Waleed Khaled al-Asa'ad to his father, Khaled al-Asa'ad, the Syrian archaeologist and head of antiquities at Palmyra, who was brutally murdered by ISIS in 2015 for defending the site. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

The first book of its kind to be published for a general readership from youngsters upwards, Hidden in the Sands: Uncovering Qatar's Past is the fascinating, fun and educational story of Qatar's heritage and the exciting discoveries being made by archaeologists. This informative and delightful book is published through the generosity of Maersk Oil as part of its programme to support education and unlock Qatar's history and heritage. Hidden beneath the sand and sea and revealed on rocks are the clues which explain why this ancient land has been such a key region throughout history. Here you can follow the detective work of archaeologists and discover Qatar's rich past. In conjunction with a fully interactive website and also available in an Arabic edition, Hidden in the Sands describes in words and pictures the treasures uncovered by archaeologists, the methods they use, and the significance of their discoveries. Today, using state-of-the-art technology for excavation, dating and conservation, teams of experts are working all over Qatar to reconstruct its past. Hidden in the Sands is fully illustrated with photographs, maps and diagrams, and embellished by the vivid and evocative illustrations of the artist Norman MacDonald. Told simply and with in-depth and up-to-date detail, it leads readers through the fascinating world of archaeology. Like reconstructing an earthenware jar from a hundred little shards, this work pieces together the fragments of the past to produce a complete and beautiful whole.

The Safaitic rock art of the North Arabian basalt desert is a unique and understudied material, one of the few surviving traces of the elusive herding societies that inhabited this region in antiquity. Yet little is known about this rock art and its role in the desert societies. Why did these peoples make carvings in the desert and what was the significance of this cultural practice? What can the rock art tell us about the relationship between the nomads and their desert landscape? This book investigates these questions through a comprehensive study of over 4500 petroglyphs from the Jebel Qurma region of the Black Desert in north-eastern Jordan. It explores the content of the rock art, how it was produced and consumed by its makers and audience, and its relationship with the landscape. This is the first-ever systematic study of the Safaitic petroglyphs from the Black Desert and it is unique for the study of Arabian rock art. It demonstrates the value of a material approach to rock art and the unique insights that rock art can provide into the relationship between nomadic herders and the wild and domestic landscape.